Beards Invade Rockies, Wins Follow! Plus, Interleague's Retardedness Revealed

Hello, readers from Earth and planets beyond! I'm mobile today, checking in via my new iPhone. I realize it's fairly tough to get your hands on these, but as a Beard of Infinite Means, I was able to score one no problem. Right now, I'm making the quick jaunt from Pluto, where I visited a cousin at his summer home, to Anaheim, where the Rockies will face the Angels this evening. Coverage is pretty good in this solar system, except in the vicinity of Jupiter, where the damn monolith always creates a dead spot.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the Beard Ratio for the Colorado Rockies is on the rise. Seth Smith, Ian Stewart, Todd Helton, and Jason Giambi are all sporting full beards lately, and of course we can always count on Joe Beimel and this blog's namesake, Ryan Spilborghs, for some quality beardsmanship. And as we all know, Beardliness is the trademark of greatness.

I doubt you'll consider it a surprise, then, that the beard-heavy Rockies (despite having lost Tulowitzki for a month of more) have played good baseball of late against some quality opponents. Since getting embarrassed by the Astros two weeks ago, the Rockies have an 8-4 record, including going 6-3 against some of the best teams in the American League. If not for Dustin Pedroia's heroics last night, the Rockies may well have swept the Red Sox to go along with their earlier sweep of Toronto.

Pedroia is a fine example of what a Beard can do for a player. This is a guy blessed with the perfect build for a career as a Photo Elf alongside a department store Santa, but slap a beard on him and he's the Rookie of the Year and the American League MVP. He killed the Rockies with a 5-5, 3 home run night, including the game-winning shot in the 10th inning. Hats off to him... I'm sure by the time he's done, he'll have a lot more trophies to display on the mantle in his mushroom house.

Now, the Rockies hit the road to Anaheim to finish the interleague portion of the schedule. With three tough games to go, the Rockies have again proven that they aren't scared of the big, bad American League. But the problems with interleague continue to be so obvious that it's puzzling how it retains its popularity. The Rockies interleague schedule this year included the Royals, Twins, Angels, Red Sox, and Blue Jays, whose combined records as of June 25th was 194-172, a winning percentage of .530. Let's look at the rest of the NL West to see what their interleague schedules look like:

San Diego: Seattle, Seattle again, Toronto, Baltimore, Tampa: 132-157 (.457) 
San Francisco: Oakland, Oakland again, Baltimore, Toronto, Boston: 137-156 (.461)
Colorado: Royals, Twins, Angels, Red Sox, Blue Jays: 194-172 (.530) 
Los Angeles: Detroit, LA Angels, Boston, Angels again, New York: 169-125 (.575)
Arizona: Toronto, Boston, Detroit, New York, Tampa: 210-152 (.580)

Does that list look familiar at all? It should, if you're a follower of the NL West, because the strength of interleague schedule almost perfectly corresponds to the teams' current position in the division. The two NL West teams with the easiest interleague schedules also happen to be the two NL West teams at the top of the division. What. A. Surprise.

It doesn't take much to see that the Rockies, Dodgers, and especially the D-backs get royally screwed with this schedule, while the Giants and the Padres get a relative cakewalk. San Fransisco got to see the sub-.500 A's six times, and then another three games against the worst team in the majors, the Orioles. The Padres faced the last-place Mariners six times, and those same awful Orioles three times. That's eighteen games against sub-.500 (sub-.300, in Baltimore's case) AL competition for Sans Diego & Francisco. On the other hand, the Rockies, D-Backs, and Dodgers together had a whopping three games against sub-.500 AL squads. Three.

Why does it matter, you ask? The answer is clear: when you're competing with four or five other teams for a division championship, two or three games can make a huge difference. So it's a huge handicap when you have to play three against Yankees, but your opponents get those three games against the Orioles.

Interleague is a nice idea handled almost completely wrong, and before MLB starts tinkering with the very bad idea of instant replay, you'd think they could at least put together a balanced schedule that doesn't favor some teams while working against others. If that means doing away with interleague baseball altogether, then so be it.

The Beard has spoken!